CASH & CREDIT 3

In a city far away, in the comfort of his home, with his wife Jane and their children safely tucked into bed, the Chief was trying to relax with a glass of whisky, but to no avail. His mind was full of the events of the day. His concern over this business was growing, yet his superiors did not seem to be taking this threat seriously enough, they were exhibiting typical complacency, and seemed to think that by drafting him into the spotlight, the problem had been solved.

The call had come a few weeks before. A somewhat officious lackey had loftily informed the Chief that he was hereby summoned to APACS to see the Director-General. The Chief was no stranger to that building, but calls like this were rare, they meant something big was on the cards. Despite his years of experience, the Chief still had butterflies in his stomach as he stood on the elegant escalator taking him up through the magnificent building symbolically to the upper echelons of the Director-General’s suite.

“The Director-General is expecting you,” the receptionist said, smilingly showing him through. He had not been kept waiting,another portent, he thought at the time.

“Come in!” said Farquhar-Brown in friendly fashion, another bad sign. Welcoming him in with a handshake and a few pleasantries, Farquhar-Brown had come straight to the point.

“We have a major credit fraud on our hands,” he said, outlining the same facts he had

presented to the APACS committee. When he heard what was involved, the Chief whistled quietly to himself. This really is a challenge, he had thought. Even then he could already see that complacency from the APACS committee was likely to be a negative force in his investigations. Not that this was anything new, but it could be a problem if the scale of damage proved to be as bad as his instincts were already telling him.

“Anything you need is yours,” Farquhar- Brown said, though both of them knew that wasn’t strictly true.

“Anything within reason, more like”, thought the Chief, but he was saying nothing. He too had long ago learned the nature of survival and compromise.

“I’ll need to choose my own team” was all he had said, proceeding to name several of the APACS specialists, and in particular, as his personal assistant and number one, the woman who was in his opinion, the real expert in her field of credit systems, Susan Bryde. They had worked together on many cases, but only when ‘big guns’ were called for. Their individual expertise was deemed by their superiors too rare and too in demand to be left undiluted by working together on the vast bulk of cases, which in the main, proved to be fairly easy to deal with.

“Are you coming to bed?”

The voice of his Wife calling downstairs to him intruded into his thoughts.

“In a minute, Dear!” he said, guiltily taking another sip of whiskey. His mind wandered back to

the case, and Susan Bryde. He remembered her reaction to his call.

“Bloody hell!” she had said, less than pleased to be summarily recruited, and he could understand that. He knew how annoying it was to be in the middle of a backlog of work and thoroughly involved in investigations only to be suddenly ‘pulled’ into something new. At the same time he knew that once Susan saw the basic facts, she would be hooked, as he already was. There was no doubt about it. This was the ‘big one’.

Nevertheless, sitting here in his darkened room alone with his thoughts, a few weeks into the investigation he had to admit it was not going particularly well. After a promising beginning, it had stalled.

They had quickly identified some of the accounts that were fraudulently operating, and had taken steps to monitor applications and cash withdrawals, soon identifying a pattern of behaviour. From there, it had been fairly simple to keep surveillance on these individuals drawing the money and paying it into a series of accounts. They had learned everything they needed to know about these individuals, including where and how they lived. Yet he did not move in and have any of them arrested, for he felt that it would simply be showing his hand to the enemy. Could any of these individuals lead him to the heart of the system? Somehow he doubted that, yet as he sat there, doing nothing, he was merely a spectator, a voyeur who was standing by doing nothing, just helplessly watching a constant haemorrhaging of the banks, a

draining of their lifeblood by a financial vampire. Susan had made it clear that she favoured a move against the system, even at the risk of showing their

hand.

“At least it’s doing something”, she had reasoned,

and who knows? - They might learn more than they thought? Surely it was worth the chance? He knew she was mad as hell at him, and he marvelled at her decisive certainty. But then it was easier for her than him, he was the one who would carry the can at the end of the day if it went wrong, she could walk away, her record unblemished. Still, he admitted to himself, she had a point. It was going nowhere otherwise.

And he had to admit, she was beautiful when she was angry.